


Longings Wild and Vain

by FlyerGrl



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: 2020 NHL Playoffs Bubble, Boys Being Boys, Hotel X (Hockey RPF), Reclaiming Your Youth, Silly, Soft Hockey Boys, look this is my first fic and I have no idea what to tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-23
Updated: 2020-08-23
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:55:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26056069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlyerGrl/pseuds/FlyerGrl
Summary: It feels like an entire lifetime since Zdeno was a rookie. He supposes it was, really. He came to North America in 1996. Were the rookies even born by 1996? He does some quick mental math and – no, the rookies were not, in fact, born then. It’s not so bad in Boston, they don’t have any true rookies playing this year. But being in this hotel with the other teams makes Zdeno feel absolutely ancient.
Comments: 23
Kudos: 34
Collections: NHL Hotel Hoedown 2020





	Longings Wild and Vain

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [HotelHoedown](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/HotelHoedown) collection. 



> **Prompt:**  
>  Hey yeah you know that one Spongebob episode where Mr. Krabs has a midlife crisis because he's old, and he joins Spongebob and Patrick on their "big night out" in a desperate attempt to feel young again?
> 
> Please give me an older player overhearing a group of rookies (same team? different teams?) planning a "big night in" and casually inserting himself into their group. Except, their "big night in" is...exceptionally tame/dorky. Give me board games, tabletop rp games, an ice eating contest, who can scoot down the hotel hallway the fastest while rolled up in hotel sheets the fastest, etc. Maybe even.... _a panty raid_. Just some wholesome intergenerational (by hockey years standards) bonding.
> 
> Can be gen or romantic. Follow ur heart if u so choose.
> 
>  **Nonny who prompted this:** I hope you enjoy my first fic ever. I read your prompt and was literally overwhelmed with the concept for this, so I hope you enjoy it. I did try to put in a few nods to the actual Spongebob episode, too. A million thanks to Sarah for holding my hand through the process and beta-ing for me.
> 
> One tiny handwavy thing: Capitals' goalie Samsonov is in this, so let's just pretend he never got hurt and actually made the trip :)
> 
> If anybody needs anything tagged, please let me know. There's no nudity, no gore, no sex. Title is from the poem 'My Lost Youth' by Longfellow.

It feels like an entire lifetime since Zdeno was a rookie. He supposes it was, really. He came to North America in 1996. Were the rookies even born by 1996? He does some quick mental math and – no, the rookies were not, in fact, born then. It’s not so bad in Boston, they don’t have any true rookies playing this year. But being in this hotel with the other teams makes Zdeno feel absolutely ancient. It doesn’t help that the rosters were increased with AHL players and rookies. The Capitals brought that one kid – the one who isn’t named Connor McDavid, but almost – who wasn’t even born until 2001. 2001! That’s not a year for adults to be born. It doesn’t help that this is probably his last chance at another Cup. This year when the whole thing could be cancelled at any moment. He knows his contract is up after this bastardized season and the team could go in another direction next year.

It is precisely this feeling of being old and unwanted that first leads Zdeno to drop his breakfast tray at a table full of young players. He recognizes the two boys from his team – Charlie and Jeremy – but Jeremy is whispering in French with one of the Flyers and Charlie is intently scrolling through his phone. He’s not sure about the other kids at the table, identifiable only by their team-branded shirts. They all look up when Zdeno sits down, folding his long limbs to fit under the table.

“Um, Z,” Charlie starts, “are you sure you don’t want to sit at another table?”

He isn’t sure, not really. He’s always prided himself on connecting with the whole team, it’s why he learned six languages, but he doesn’t spend considerable time with the young players, preferring the company of the other captains. Nevertheless, something drew him to this table. A midlife crisis, perhaps? Is 43 midlife? He hopes not.

Before he can answer, Jeremy’s friend mumbles something in rapid-fire French to Jeremy and the two begin giggling behind their coffee cups. Zdeno wonders, not for the first time, why he never learned French, but he usually has Patrice around for that. He never needed to know more than a few hockey-related words.

“I just thought I’d see what you kids were up to,” he cuts through the laughter, cringing internally at himself. Could he sound more like a meme? “I won’t interrupt your conversation. Pretend I’m not even here.”

The laughter ripples around the table in earnest this time.

“Pretend you’re not here?” Jeremy asks, “You’re the captain, sitting at our breakfast table randomly. We can’t ignore you.”

“Well, then, introduce me to your friends,” Zdeno acquiesces. “I don’t know the boys on the other teams.”

Jeremy gestures to the giggle-inciter next to him, “This is Phil Myers. We played on the same team in the Q. Next to him is Carter Hart, they’re on the Flyers together. Samsonov is from Washington, he doesn’t speak much English but the two of them seem to communicate in goalie. Sergachev starts the Tampa contingent and translates for Samsonov sometimes. Then we’ve got Anthony Cirelli and Mitchell Stephens from Tampa. A bunch of us played for Canada together in ‘17, so we know each other pretty well.”

Zdeno is slightly surprised that so many players from other teams would choose to sit together, but he understands how deep the national ties run. He nods as Jeremy introduces each one and they each give him a tentative wave in return. He feels like he’s made the situation awkward and they just want to eat breakfast in peace.

He’s not sure, then, what prompts him to sit down at the same table the next day and the day after that. They mostly ignore him after the first day, a hulking shadow in the corner. The French-Canadians continue to whisper and giggle, the Russians talk about the food with occasional interludes where Samsonov and Hart conduct painstakingly earnest gesticulated conversations that nobody else at the table seems to follow. Occasionally, other players will rotate in or out of the circle, but the core group remains. There seems to be an unspoken rule that only players of a certain age are allowed at the table, which Zdeno has clearly broken, but they’re obviously not going to tell him to leave. It’s not that he minds the reverence (who would?), but he misses being one of the guys who can just shoot the shit. The younger players are carefree in a way Zdeno hasn’t felt in years.

After a week of sitting at the younger players’ table, Zdeno hears something from the Russians that piques his interest. _“Remember, it’s a secret. You can’t even tell Ovechkin.”_ He’d only been half-listening – it takes too much effort to eavesdrop in a language other than Slovak, Czech, or English – but when he hears Ovechkin’s name, he rolls the tape back in his brain and stops on the word “secret.” What was the secret the Russians were keeping? It couldn’t be a game secret or they wouldn’t be talking about it in mixed company. He starts listening more intently to their conversation. _“I know, Misha. If anybody finds out, the whole party will be ruined.”_

A party? The younger players are planning a party? Well, that might be exactly what Zdeno was looking for to boost his spirits. He thinks back on their Cup celebration and the notorious $150,000 bar tab and smiles to himself. He’s sure that if the kids put their minds to it, they could throw an excellent party inside the hotel. There’s already a whole bar full of liquor and they might even be planning to smuggle things in from outside the hotel. Marijuana is legal in Canada; they could probably bribe the staff to bring them some. He knows some players in the league do more illicit drugs, too. The more he thinks about it, the more he realizes a rookie party (even if they’re not quite rookies) is exactly what he was looking for. He just needs to get himself invited.

The next morning at breakfast Zdeno leans over to Sergachev conspiratorially, while the Canadians are in the buffet line loading up their plates.

“I couldn’t help overhearing your big plans yesterday. Are you boys having a party?”

Sergachev cuts his eyes at Zdeno nervously, “Hah! What? A party? Who?”

“I heard you and Samsonov talking. You mentioned a secret and he said something about a party.”

“You, ah, you can understand Russian?” Sergachev stammers.

Zdeno forgets that not everyone knows about his proficiency with languages. “ _Da_. Slovak, Czech, Polish, Swedish, Russian, German, and English.”

“Oh! Well, I’m not the one planning it, you’d have to ask Phil and Jeremy if you want to know specifics. But, uh, please don’t tell them that I told you that.”

Zdeno thinks that’s fair and claps Sergachev on the shoulder with a smile. He’ll wait for the other players to return from the buffet line before mentioning it again. At least now he’s confirmed there is a party of some kind and he’s more than ready to hang with the cool kids. Do they still say “cool kids?” He might have to brush up on his slang before the big night.

Zdeno decides to bring up the subject with Jeremy in the locker room before practice that day. He’s probably breaking another unspoken rule about table/team etiquette, but at this point he doesn’t care. Initially, Jeremy has the same stammering reaction that Sergachev had, until he acquiesces and tells Zdeno that yes, there is a party, but to please not tell Coach. Zdeno laughs and explains he has no intention of ratting the boys out, he’s only interested in an invitation. Jeremy balks at first, saying something about Zdeno cramping their style, but reluctantly says he’ll give him an answer after practice. Zdeno sees him sneak his phone out of his bag and assumes he’s texting Phil about it, which is confirmed when Jeremy comes up to him after the showers and mumbles, “okay, fine, you can come. I’ll text you the details.”

****

The night of the party comes and Zdeno feels almost as nervous and giddy as his wedding night. He tries to rationalize with himself that these are the same boys he plays with and against every night, but something about this party feels different. They’d told him the party would start at 8:00 in the hotel’s aptly named Victory Ballroom, so he plans to arrive fashionably late. At 8:01 he stands in front of the ballroom’s double doors and takes a deep breath.

Zdeno opens the door and while he wasn’t sure what to expect from the party, this surely wasn’t it. In one corner, there is a table with six boys, each wearing a hotel robe, heads bent over booklets and small figures. One of them is surrounded by a cardboard barrier of some kind. He cranes his neck to the opposite corner of the large room where there are multiple television screens set up with gaming chairs and a few of the boys are playing Xbox. In the middle of the room is, most inexplicably of all, a children’s blow-up pool filled with brightly colored balls. Winding throughout the room – which is beginning to resemble a middle school science fair without the science – are traffic cones and white tape lines. He has no idea what these are for until the first office chair goes zipping past him backwards ridden by a gleeful Penguin followed closely by a laughing Flyer.

This is the rookie party he was looking forward to? Where are the strippers? Where are the illegal drugs? Where is the…fun?

He takes a moment to gather his bearings, insofar as he can, and steps further into the room, taking in more details. There is music coming from somewhere in the room, which upon closer inspection, is a small table behind the ball pit (can he really call that thing a ball pit?) proclaiming the DJ talents of ‘Young Beezer.’ A DJ is the first thing approximating an actual party in this hall of mild horrors, so Zdeno makes his way toward it before the players on office chairs come screaming around the makeshift track again and they nearly collide. The disruption, however, does make the other groups take notice of his arrival.

“Z! You made it!” Charlie calls from the bathrobe table.

He changes course and heads for Charlie’s table. “What is all of this?” he asks, tentatively.

“This is the party, man! Everyone contributed something so nobody would feel left out!”

“What is it, exactly, that you’re doing?”

“D&D!” Charlie beams at him, “I’m a paladin!”

Zdeno has no idea what that means, but he nods along with him. “Uh huh, and the rest of it?” he gestures at their surroundings.

“Oh man, they have a sick videogame setup over there. There are multiple systems and everything. I think some of the guys are coming down later with some more board games and,” he drops his voice just above a whisper, “a few of us smuggled in…Nerf guns.”

Nerf guns. Dungeons and Dragons. That weird ball pit.

“And this is, well, it?” He has to ask.

“Yeah!” Charlie’s smile is starting to dim. “I mean, we also talked the restaurant staff into sneaking us food, so we’ve got like chips and soda over there and later we’re going to make our own pizzas that they’ll bake for us.”

Huh. Charlie seemed really excited before Zdeno started questioning his ‘party.’ He looks around the room again and tries to see it through the younger player’s eyes. These boys have been training for the Stanley Cup since they were his daughter’s age. They were sent away from their families as teens, just like he was. They missed out on typical teenage things like house parties and proms to go to tournaments and training camps. If this is how they choose to blow off steam, who is he to tell them they’re wrong? Maybe they’re just trying to recapture missed time the same way he is.

“Okay,” he decides. “Show me how to play this Dungeons and Dragons.”

****

As the night goes on, Zdeno enjoys himself more and more. The younger players are funny and lighthearted in the way he was originally hoping for. They beat him easily at Mario Kart, then again at something called Catan, all the while chugging sodas and trying to determine who can belch the loudest. As Charlie promised, they do make pizzas, which almost devolves into a food fight when the lid of the garlic powder unscrews itself over Mathieu Joseph’s pizza, leaving it covered in a mountain of garlic. He immediately blames his brother and the rest of the Pittsburgh and Tampa players come to the Joseph boys’ defense.

Later, when the office chair races have subsided and the board games are abandoned, the boys decide to watch a movie. They drag the chairs that had been surrounding the room toward the center, call the front desk for extra blankets and pillows and assemble themselves to watch _Mighty Ducks 2_ , which they’d unanimously declared superior to the first one. He briefly notices that Jeremy is sharing his blanket nest with Phil from the Flyers and wonders if that’s something they should talk about later, but reminds himself to take off his captain hat for the time being and just relax. One of the Capitals he doesn’t recognize has decided to sit in the ball pit for the movie, which can’t possibly be comfortable, but again, not his problem. Shortly after they turn the lights off, Zdeno feels Charlie bump his elbow. When he turns to look, he sees a flash of neon green plastic from under Charlie’s blanket slide quickly toward him.

“It’s time,” he whispers.

Zdeno grabs the Nerf gun and remembers how he wound up here. He was looking for a change of pace, something different from being a captain and a dad and the oldest player in the league (thanks for nothing, Jarda). He’d wanted to find his youthful spirit again. He thought he’d do that with strippers and copious amounts of alcohol, but apparently there are multiple paths to the same location. He grins as he grips the handle of the gun and nods at Charlie. Charlie turns and nods to someone else and they all let loose Nerf fire on their unexpecting movie-watching foes, turned friends, turned foes again. The Capital in the ball pit retaliates by pelting his personal artillery of plastic balls at them and soon the pillows turn into weapons as well. They all collapse, laughing in the dark as the movie plays above them. Truthfully, Zdeno thinks he found exactly what he was looking for.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was mostly inspired by (ages before seeing this prompt) picturing Chara's billet family picking him up from the airport in the mid-90s and finding out they were going to host Slovak Slenderman.
> 
> While I was writing, someone posted this picture in a thread about Chara and it also helped me a lot: https://twitter.com/cytosine_37/status/1296556940466827269?s=20 (no, I don't know how to make links)
> 
> Every non-Chara player in the story was born in 1996 or later (yes, I made a list) because that's the year Chara was drafted.
> 
> And yes, the Flyer on the office chair is TK.


End file.
